Related Articles

Perhaps you heard. On March 29, a 20-year-old Texas man driving a truck crossed the center line on a two-lane rural road and smashed head-on into a bus filled with seniors on their way home from a religious retreat. Thirteen church-goers died. The truck driver survived, and reportedly told a witness he had been texting at the time of the crash.

That admission wasn’t news to the witness, who had been following the truck driver. So concerned was the witness that he tried to alert two different sheriff’s offices to the danger the truck driver was posing as he weaved back and forth. The witness’s girlfriend recorded more than eight minutes of cellphone video of the distracted driver, stopping the recording just before the crash.

“Somebody needs to stop him,” she said.

No one did.

Not to demean National Distracted Driving Awareness Month in any way. We should observe it every month. But given the horrible crash in Texas and our own anecdotal experience, it makes you wonder if we are making any headway in deterring distracted drivers.

It doesn’t seem like it. If it’s not the driver in front of you, oblivious that the light has turned green — it’s someone going 40 mph in the fast lane of the freeway. California Highway Patrol officer Custodio Lopez tells a story about being off duty and driving his personal vehicle past four cars, three driven by people holding cellphones to their ear.

“I remember thinking, I wish I was on patrol right now,” said Lopez, a three-year CHP veteran who works out of Golden Gate Division. “I was like, wow, this is a major distraction.”

The data is discouraging. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the percentage of drivers visibly manipulating handheld devices jumped from 0.4 percent in 2006 to 2.2 percent in 2015. Granted, 2.2 percent looks like a small number. But it represents a 550 percent increase.

“These statistics are likely much higher and are often under-reported,” Lopez said. “What a lot of parents don’t know is that the No. 1 thing that kills teens is distracted driving.”

What a lot of drivers don’t know is there is no such thing as a quick glance at your phone. A car traveling 55 mph will cover the length of a football field in five seconds — not much longer than it takes to text “LOL.”

“That’s something that stays with me,” Lopez said.

Distracted drivers are not just a nuisance. According to the NHTSA, 3,477 people were killed in collisions involving distracted drivers in 2015 — a 9 percent increase from 2014. One ray of sunshine: Injuries were down 9 percent.

The mind keeps drifting back to Texas and 13 seniors being wiped out in a flash. Incredibly, the distracted driver wasn’t breaking the law when he plowed into the bus. Texas is one of four states that does not have a law banning texting while driving. The closest Texas came to passing such a bill was in 2011. Then-Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it, calling it “a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults.”

Another thing about the tragedy in Texas: The man and his girlfriend followed the distracted driver for miles. Should people in their position be more proactive? I’ll admit it — I honked at a few texters, but stopped when it occurred to me I could create the accident I was hoping to avoid. So I began making eye contact and putting on my angry dad face. Then I imagined having to explain to someone like officer Lopez that I rear-ended the guy in front of me because the guy next to me was texting.

“(Intervention) depends on the situation,” Lopez said.

I’d prefer this situation: drivers putting their phones away so we can all meet here again next year for National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Gary Peterson is the metro columnist for the East Bay Times, writing three times per week about the important people, events and issues in the East Bay Area. Before becoming the East Bay metro columnist, Gary covered the criminal courts in Contra Costa County, served as a general assignment reporter, and spent 31 years as a sports columnist.